TGR: How has the newest Stoked benefitted from any design or development lessons learned from making the previous Stoked Rider games?

Tony: Our developer has a lot of experience making snowboarding games so they had a long list of game play and technical goals to achieve. Independent of our developer’s experience I have been involved with several snowboarding games dating back to 1994. Most recently I was involved with Amped 2 for the original Xbox. Our media partner Absinthe Films also had a lot of great ideas based on their real world experiences making some of the best snowboarding films available. We all sat down together, compared our ideas and experiences, and came up with a series of key things that became Stoked.

TGR: What was the design impetus for splitting gameplay styles into Stylish and Hucker? Do players choose a style for good or are they able to switch mid-game?

Tony: I think we have a long line of great trick-based games to thank for some of the initial design inspiration. Some trick games of the past have been focused on button mashing; do as many tricks as you can and really go for the largest score you can while others (and these are fewer in number) have focused more on doing a perfect, smooth trick. Quality VS quantity. The more we thought about it the more we realized how each of these things really offers a unique experience that influences everything from how you approach a trick feature to how you sit and hold the controller. Players generally tend to gravitate to one play style or another and it takes a bit of play time to find which style feels more natural to you. There is no concept of a right or wrong way to play but there is the concept of playing in a way that is most comfortable to you and letting you exploit that in a way that makes you feel like the experience is personalized for you from controls to rewards.

TGR: Real mountains. Real boarders. Real sponsors. What led Stoked to be set in reality over a fictional or fantastical setting? Was the team able to visit any of the game’s mountains to study them or do video and photoshoots?

Tony: We wanted to make sure that we made a snowboarding game that looked like and felt like a snowboarding movie. Because of this it was natural to pursue sponsors, professional riders, music performance artists, etc that complemented this goal. The development team had access to a lot of mountain data (photographs, video clips, and terrain data specifically). We had a lot of recommendations and feedback on our mountains from our licensing partners based on what they encounter every day. Our development partner is also staffed with many passionate snowboarders so they also had a lot of personal experience (including travel) from which to draw inspiration.